Sunday, September 15, 2013

As If We Planned It All


We remember all
or none.
There is no part way here,
no victimizer
without victims,
no Ariel Castro without

No Castro without Jocelyn Berry,
the daughter of raped Amanda.
No Castro without all the stories
of Berry and DeJesus and Knight
determined to endure.
No improbabilities here,
not once the stories begin
and grind their way to some end.

No stories without all the stories,
without knowing how Ariel Castro
became himself, without the pain he caused,
the pain from which he came.
Pain with or without the courage to flee.
End with or without the will to turn
and face the demons coming on.

About Ariel Castro
there is everything
and nothing to say.
Who will tell the story
of how Castro got that way?
Who will say how his life
was truncated and tormented
and tortured before he met
Figueroa and Berry and DeJesus and Knight
and used horror to change
the arc of their lives?

Ah, the sympathy we feel for Castro's victims,
the means by which we hide
from the way we sent
Berry and DeJesus and Knight
to twisted therapy in Castro’s home.
Who will remember
Berry and Dejesus and Knight
on their way to whatever happens next,
happens after Castro has hung himself?
Who remembers Grimilda Figueroa
and her four children?

Who remembers what we did
or didn’t do to Trayvon Martin
before George Zimmerman?
Remembers that we sent Zimmerman to meet
Martin on the street?
Who remembers James Byrd dragged
behind John King’s truck for miles?
Who remembers Matthew Shepherd,
remembers what we did?

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